Monthly Archives: July 2018

Why switch on lights even when there is adequate daylight in the room?

Let us go back in time when only animals lived on earth. They took protection within the elements of nature. Not so long back, during the pre-industrial era a few centuries ago, humans created shelters with materials found in nature. Today, we create shelters with materials made by us.

The distinction between using materials found and made is among the major causes for the ecological imbalance in the construction sector. Humans are habit forming, and we see how easily we have been trapped into switching on electric lights even when there is adequate daylight in the room.

We switch on the fan without fail, irrespective of the natural air inside. Even today, millions of people in villages live with low light and few windows without any complaint. Their senses are accustomed to the available light and air. Most of us have got technologically corrupted senses.

The best example can be how air conditioning has conditioned us, within a few years for the majority and few decades for the rest of us. With our offices, cars, homes and most public spaces air conditioned, we have lost our body tolerance to stay out of it. We have forgotten that human bodies are biologically designed to live with the available temperatures and there are many means of living with heat.

The generations that lived until recently managed to have 6 to 7 people of a middle-class family in a less than 2,000 sq. ft house, managing with available space and building materials. Of course, even now thousands of families across India live with the available light, air, space and materials, but the number of people who aspire for more is increasing drastically. Finally, everything boils down to available resources. Once processed, much is wasted and depleted, while resource unprocessed can replenish itself, like light, air, space and materials.

The very idea of making is an action to counter the nature – if she cannot supply it, we humans will make it. Increasingly, we are even rejecting what is found, in favour of what is made.

Making of good architecture does not need all the marketed manufactured materials; most often they take away the possibility of deeper aesthetic beauty of the building, replacing it with a lavish and superficial surface. Of course, we need to make products for a range of life challenges, be it medication or transportation, but not always for construction.

Generations have lived without electricity, even in crowded areas, using ideas like indoor courts, perforated voids, thick walls, high ceilings, bay windows, mukhamantapas and others.

This is not to say we should live without electricity today, but we need to learn to minimise our dependency on it.

The majority of the poor people on this Earth still live with their five senses aligned with the available light, air, water, space and temperature. If the majority can live so, why not the minority of affluent people?